Bone of my Bones, Flesh of my Flesh - EPISODE 7 (The Bakersfield Three) | Forensic Files

[Music] sometimes it's the simplest action done without much thought that ends up
setting off a chain of events that will change numerous lives such was the case on a warm August afternoon when a group
of 14-year-old boys were wrestling with each other in the cold water of the kar River 17's Olivia lavoyce joins us live
at Hart Park tonight with what she's learned today Olivia greeny the discovery was made here this weekend
when a group of teens found a portion of a human arm from the elbow down with the
hand still attached this comes 3 weeks after a child found a portion of a human leg out at Lake one a Vista officials
really can't say much about either body parts but one thing's for certain this situation is highly unusual and of
course very suspicious the boys were in a part of the river where the water was calm
enough to wait into one of the boys felt something brush up against his leg at first he jumped and moved away but when
the object once again floated towards him and touched his foot he decided to see what it was and pulled up a heavy
black bag from the river floor one of the boys yelled there might be money or maybe even gold inside one investigator
said they were just young kids with a wild imagination thinking they'd found treasure I have to think 99% of people
probably wouldn't have gone after the bag they just let it pass by continuing Downstream but these boys didn't
as one boy pulled up the bag he wasn't quite sure what he was looking at until he pulled it out and realized he was
holding a human arm the bag was filled with rocks whoever put it in the river intended it to stay at the bottom hidden
unlike the leg in the lake this was clearly a crime see when the leg was found investigators said it was possible
that it had detached from the body naturally from decomposition the arm in the river
however was clearly an act of dismemberment and therefore considered a homicide here's Bailey's Mom
Jane when the arm was found we didn't know whose that was so we're like does the leg and the arm go together are they
two different people when the leg in the Lake was found Cheryl and her family didn't
strongly consider it could belong to Micah it seemed too small but from the little information we could get about
the arm in the river it it seemed possible it belonged to an adult man I remember talking with
Lance and and I think he said it and it's so true he said I thought we I thought we feared the
worst I thought we feared that he was dead and now all of a sudden it became now we're worried that he's been chopped
[Music] up I'm Olivia Lavo and this is the Bakersfield 3 [Music] I needed to know is that Bailey is mAh
you know his moms are going frantic is that our baby it was just very I don't know how to describe it
it's like you're just walking through it and doing what you have to do to get through it and you
have breakdowns and you're horrified and sometimes you're like oh please God let
this be my daughter so we can find them and then you feel bad for thinking that cuz
I never wanted Bailey to be dead at this point Micah had been missing for 5 months and Bailey for four
for Jane and Cheryl the not knowing where their children were and what had happened to them had been agonizing but
then not knowing if the body parts belong to their children opened them up to a special kind of crippling maddening
misery as they were told the DNA results wouldn't be anytime soon when you're sitting in the middle
of it and you just want to know is that my son is that my son and they tell you it's going to be a year or more can't
really give you an idea cuz they're so backlogged cuz they got file folders full of information and baggies and bags
and God knows what and we aren't the only family in line a whole year full of people waiting in
front of us and now there's a whole two however many year behind us we're all just this sequence of body parts or
bodies that are trying to be identified and that just broke our heart just broke our
heart being faced with waiting a year or more for the DNA results was the last straw for Cheryl Jane and Dy who had
already seen so many cracks in the Justice system we just found so many so many things that we as moms felt
were broken I think we all just knew that we we couldn't let our our children we couldn't let their stories end with
this kind of final note we had to use this to help ourselves help each other and help
[Music] others they decided investigating their children's cases wasn't enough enough
they wanted to change the entire system and they began with taking on three Monumental issues the first was issues
with secret witness a nonprofit that operates an anonymous tip line as well as allocates reward funds to certain
unsolved cases in an effort to get people to call in with tips we find out when we ask for rewards oh wait a second
there there is no money and we haven't had any money for rewards in years the second issue was the DNA testing wait
times and the third was that Kern County didn't have the specialized equipment needed to thoroughly search waterways
for bodies their first step was going to the Kern County Board of Supervisors meeting
let me just say as a crime reporter covering a Board of Supervisors meeting was sort of my worst nightmare no
offense to any local politics reporters out there the meeting feels endlessly long roughly 6 hours during which
supervis visor go over County budget issues and then there's public comment where just as it sounds members of the
public can bring their complaints or concerns to supervisors usually the comments are to the average person
probably pretty boring I want the sidewalk near my house fixed I want there to be more bus drivers for the
schools things like that even though Kern County is ridden with crime I'd never heard of anyone coming to the
supervisors to demand action as it pertained to violence certainly never a victim's family until one day at the end
of a long session the three moms Dawning Bakersfield 3 t-shirts and holding large
poster boards with their children's faces walk towards the podium could you give us your name for the record please
Cheryl holson bake our purpose here today as part of this terrible club that we're calling Bakersfield
3 my son went missing first and we believe my family and I believe that it's connected to the two other women
and their families behind me we noticed on your agenda that you are considering or have considered a grant partnering
with a grant from the Department of Justice that would help improve DNA processing times I would beg you to
please consider that and move forward with it there are at this point two different human remains we still don't
have DNA evidence back from them to suggest whose child it may or may not be James's mom D then took the floor
talking about the issues with the secret Witness Program that Services Kern County the women learned early on that
their children's cases could not have rewards because the funding just wasn't available and they also heard from
people who told them they tried to call in an anonymous tip and had issues getting through to an
operator secret witness was supposed to be a Lifeline for families in their situation and it was hardly functional
as it turned out at that point the organization was flat broke it had little over $1,000 and organizers at the
time said that money was more or less saved to pay the phone bill as a reporter I had encouraged people to call
in tips to the Anonymous hotline hundreds of times by that point I had no clue the program was in such rough shape
until the mothers exposed it they have their website that had not been updated since
2012 and with my friend standing behind me we learned that the majority of the links were broken lastly Bailey's Mom
Jane spoke to the board her voice was shaky as she tried to keep from breaking down one of the main things is we need
to have funding for the equipment to search the waterways instead of having to borrow from to Larry County to search
for these body parts in the rivers in the lake that we're still waiting on DNA for all these months later wondering if
it's my daughter or if it's Micah or who it is um so desperately need funding for
that you know it shouldn't take months to find out if an arm or a leg is your daughter or your son um because what
we're dealing with is very hard it's harder than knowing if they're dead because it's not knowing that drives you
crazy and what you think's happening to them some of what you know is happen happen to them and you just want to find
them and bring them home and if they're in the water or out in the desert you want to go get your child and bring them
home thank you ladies for coming forward this morning our hearts break for you with the tragedies that you have endured
and I admire your courage to come forward and try to help us find a way to do something positive out of the
tragedies tragedies that you've endured so we we will take to heart what you've said and explore what some options are
supervisor Perez uh thank you chairman hearing from you this morning uh is absolutely
horrifying in a way that there are no words for really and um I can't imagine what you have been through and what you
are going through it is uh utterly horrifying to say this is shocking uh is a gross understatement
the degree to which you are educating us and the community is priceless seeing a supervisor cry at a
meeting was unheard of but so was this entire situation of the moms bringing these issues out in public like this the
only female supervisor on the board letia Perez said she wanted to pledge $10,000 to the secret Witness Program
thank you I'm sure that we all cannot imagine I cannot imagine uh what you are experiencing thank you for being here
and I think this body really cares about what you're experiencing so I think we need to take action fast um thank
you the other supervisors quickly followed suit pledging in total $40,000 to secret witness as it turned out it
was the first time the program had gotten a sizable donation in 6 years but the moms didn't stop there they
still had to fix the two other issues of the DNA testing times and the lack of equipment to search the river and Lake
well what do you mean we we have to borrow equipment that's better than what we have we have to borrow that from
another County well wait what wait a minute and all of a sudden we're talking about okay how do we fix or how do we
help a public agency gather the resources to get equip that's better than what we have
now that's when we decided to raise money to buy the equipment and make the public aware that we need
this together the three moms were a force United driven Relentless as they always said fight like a mother and I
think we learned early on if we stick together we can do this better more often than not the three of the them
were together if one of them had a meeting with law enforcement the other two would show up that's just sort of
how they operated as one and they bonded in a way that most of us could probably
never understand because we know exactly what you're going through you're not going crazy because you're having these
weird thoughts where you're like oh I'm going to go on the internet and look what decomposing bodies look like at
this many months in the water and this m long and you know we can talk about that
to each other and we have very odd conversations for most people most people would think them very
odd and I think because we we know that our our children knew each other it feels
like we were meant to work together and we were meant to be a team as a team they began working with
other victims families who didn't know how to advocate for their loved ones cases but the moms now being referred to
is the Bakersfield three moms had become experts in the few months they hadd been
working together that fall I'd see them at court with other families there to hold their hand show support and be an
advocate of sorts around this time I was working with a woman who'd been brutally
attacked raped her throat slit left for dead in a field only to be discovered the next day by a traumatized
maintenance man the woman was left with severe brain damage and post-traumatic stress and as a result she was living in
squalor and conditions utterly unfit for any human being as I reported it the moms were some of the first people to
reach out to help Cheryl and her other son Luke actually came to the woman's house with me and helped clean it out
dead mice cockroaches and all I remember after a long day of cleaning Cheryl then
took to organizing the woman's photographs and putting them into a photo album so she could look back at
her happy memories whenever she wanted Cheryl said working with other victims and victims
families was fulfilling and a welcome distraction from their personal hell they were living in but no matter how
much they filled their schedules the wait for the DNA results on the leg found in the lake and the arm in the
river was consuming particularly for Jane I tried to keep Jane calm uh calmer I mean how can you keep anybody
calm and who wants to wish that that's their loved one found you don't but when you your mama
gut tells you that your daughter really isn't with us anymore you know it's just it's so
conflicting but you want your nightmare to be over or part of your nightmare always went to the lake you
know and fought to get it drained in the community said drain the lake clean the
lake see what's in there it killed Jane knowing the rest of a woman's body potentially her
daughter's body was in the lake and seemingly nothing was being done about it so she made it a point to talk to
just about anyone who would listen about how unsanitary the lake was and how much
it needed to be drained even when they didn't want to hear it which was likely the case for hundreds of people who
gathered that fall for the fishing dir among the hopeful fishermen there was Jane handing out
flyers reminding people of the body part that was found out here and that the body hasn't been
recovered whether or not it's mic or Bailey we don't know whose body part it is and they're out here having a fishing
tournament reminding people not to eat the fish you know Jane's audio is from a Facebook live video she did on the
Bakersfield 3 Facebook page she then directed her phone camera to the area where she'd been going daily for several
months by that point so this is the little I guess the beach where the lake washed up in July
and the little 5-year-old girl was playing with it this is a lake that they have signs that say you can't swim in
because there's so much bacteria and pollution so you know hey why not straighten it clean it up the water
there is so dirty and murky you could be just ankled deep and not be able to see
your feet part of Jane's daily process involved taking a long stick and poking around at the bottom of the man-made
lake to see if she'd find anything that felt like it could be another body part who carries a stick around in their car
you know to go look for a dead body at the lake that's what my reality is now Cheryl Micah's mom knew what that
was like to be doing something you could never dream you would have to do and for
there to be really no words to describe it such as when the Corner's office asked her to give a DNA sample they
could use to see if the arm in the river matched her bloodline it seems like it would be a
really straightforward process the whole DNA swab thing but every time I've ever
had it done I've broken down it's just it's just like saying you know bone of my bone Flesh of My Flesh
you know it's just that whole I I'm giving you part of my body so that you can see if if my son who is
part of my body is if this is part of me if that's part of me is the body part that you hauled out of a river part of
me having to give the swab in the first place felt nightmarish enough knowing the answer would take possibly a year or
more was simply unacceptable to the mothers we knew that there was technology out there and they were right
the technology came to light after a horrific wildfire that fall in Paradise California I read an article about this
company Andy who volunteered to set up a lab and send volunteers with New Rapid DNA technology
to match DNA and to help those loved ones find their family members in the rubble of that
fire their technology could take just a portion of a bone and as long as there was a living
family member that they could attempt to match it to they could say within a certain range
of you know certainty that this was their loved one and so I called Jane and die and I'm
all read this newspaper article read this news article this company can do this with a chip off of a
bone in days they can do that in days why are we waiting why are we waiting a year or
more can't really tell you when it's going to happen about whether these remains are Micah's or
Bailey's then the rage and anger starts flooding in so Jane being Jane because this is
who she is she's like I'm calling them I'm calling them and she did she talked to them and they said sure we'll come
we'll do it having Andy rapid DNA on board was a big breakthrough after several months of
an agonizing wait it seemed Cheryl and Jane would finally get answers did either set of remains the leg found in
the lake or the arm in the river belonged to their children but like with every everything in this case there was
never much time to focus on just one thing something else shocking was about to [Music]
happen the timing I just I was trying to do the math in my head I just was like this girl has to know
something that's next time on the Bakers field 3 [Music]

EPISODE 7/15

Bone of my Bones, Flesh of my Flesh A group of teens make a horrifying discovery in the local river.

When two friends go missing back-to-back, and in between their disappearances, a third friend is murdered, their mothers begin their own investigation. As the connections between the three cases are explored, the mothers navigate devastating twists and turns, including one revelation that shakes the community to its core.

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The Bakersfield Three Podcast https://casefilepresents.com/the-bakersfield-three/

----- CREDITS

Writing & Narration – Olivia Lavoice Audio Editing - Anthony Telfer Production and Music – Mike Migas Animation - Mat Rydzik, Paulina Szymanska

Special thanks to the mothers and family of the Bakersfield 3 & KGET News Station

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Brief Summary

Three mothers advocate for justice after human remains are found in Bakersfield, revealing systemic failures in the investigation process.

Key points

Discovery of Human Remains. A group of teens finds a human arm in the river, raising alarm.
Mothers Fight for Justice. Mothers of missing children confront local officials to demand action on DNA testing.
Breakthrough in DNA Testing. A new rapid DNA technology offers hope for identifying remains quickly.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I thought we feared the worst.

A mother reflecting on her fears for her missing child.

2:45WatchMay 20, 2024

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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